Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1321 - 3. MD5 Algorithm Description

Top: Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
Up: Requests For Comments
Up: RFC 1321
Prev: 2. Terminology and Notation
Next: 3.1 Step 1. Append Padding Bits

### 3. MD5 Algorithm Description

We begin by supposing that we have a b-bit message as input, and that we wish to find its message digest. Here b is an arbitrary nonnegative integer; b may be zero, it need not be a multiple of eight, and it may be arbitrarily large. We imagine the bits of the message written down as follows:

              m_0 m_1 ... m_{b-1}

The following five steps are performed to compute the message digest of the message.

3.1 Step 1. Append Padding Bits
3.2 Step 2. Append Length
3.3 Step 3. Initialize MD Buffer
3.4 Step 4. Process Message in 16-Word Blocks
3.5 Step 5. Output

Next: 3.1 Step 1. Append Padding Bits

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1321 - 3. MD5 Algorithm Description